Ludwig von Mises

Even for those who want states to provide certain amenities, many modern states are far, far greater in size and scope that what is even necessary to provide those amenities in the first place. Unfortunately, the primary effect of bigness in these states is to enhance the power of the state and limit the ability of citizens to escape the state's taxes and impoverishing regulations.

While it is rarely stated explicitly, the legitimacy of the modern American electoral system is founded on the idea of majority rule. Because of this, at the conclusion of each election, the victors claim the election reflected "the will of the people" and, in many cases, also claim a "mandate" to implement the victor's policy agenda. This has always been a tenuous claim in every way...

Whether it be Communist Russia, Nazi Germany or Fascist America, once the people have been successfully conditioned to allow Big Brother to dictate thought, the next step has always been totalitarian rule.

It is time for central banks to start acknowledging their limitations, and doing so by acting and not talking about their future intentions. It is also time for investors to stop believing that central banks had the answers to begin with.

The problems plaguing the health care system are rooted in the treatment of health care as a "right." This justifies government intervention in the health care marketplace. This intervention causes increasing prices and declining quality and supply. Ironically, those who suffer most from government intervention are the very people proponents of these programs claim to want to help.

Government interference impedes the entrepreneur’s use of economic calculation and the attempt to use prices to impose managerial discipline. Taxes and price regulations that interfere with corporate pro?ts (distorting an important signal of employee performance); laws that interfere with hiring and promotion (including the need to hire people to deal with government); and the omnipresent threat of arbitrary antitrust or regulatory activity, in response to which entrepreneurs must become adept at "diplomacy and bribery."

... what we are looking at is a flawed system that penalizes saving and encourages reckless spending and printing money. Although we all appear to be stuck in the same environment that combines negative interest rates and price inflation, we have the lower strata of society that is doomed to lose, as they end up spending more, discouraged by negative rates, and instead accumulate debt to keep up with the increasing prices. And then we have the “winners”, who know how to take advantage of the system and thrive in it...

“What socialists like Senator Sanders should say if they want to be truthful and straightforward,” DiLorenzo thus avers, “is not that government can offer citizens anything for free, but that they want healthcare (and much else) to become a government-run monopoly financed entirely with taxes. Taxes hide, but do not eliminate, the cost of individual government programs.” And these programs are far more expensive to society than they would be on the free market.

Writing this week for Bloomberg, Tyler Cowan made the case that Brazil is “still the country of the future.” While some share Cowan’s optimism for the nation’s future, his focus on the country’s diversity, size, and vaguely federalized political structure overlooks the real story – that Austrian economics and libertarianism is winning the battle of ideas within the country.

"Dishonest money has created a culture of speculation out of ordinary producers and savers. As a result, we confuse financial markets for the source of our wealth." Perhaps at some point our central bankers will come to appreciate that wealth is not created by the printing of money. It is created by honest entrepreneurial endeavour, which is itself jeopardised by constant monetary intervention.

This rotting shack in Sydney and its tiny plot of land sold for nearly $1 million in May of 2014 – more than two years ago. Since then, house prices in Australia have increased even further. Yes, it is an insane bubble, no doubt about it... and now, it appears, the banks are finally realizing, and are pulling back.